Anti-cheat vigilante gets hired by Riot
"I am grateful to have been given a second chance in life."
This month we've already seen an excellent example of anti-cheat work in the form of fake cheating software for CSGO, but one vigilante appears to have done so well that Riot's offered him a job.
Mohamed Al-Sharifi, also known as GamerDoc, is a 24-year-old Iraqi living in London who has spent two years catching cheaters in Overwatch and Valorant. As explained in a profile by Vice, Al-Sharifi managed to discover several different methods used by cheaters in Valorant, and got the vulnerabilities patched out after providing Riot with the necessary information. He even ran a Discord channel for the Overwatch Police Department, which managed to expose players who were win-trading in Overwatch. He did all this despite receiving death threats and absolutely no pay for his work - but it at least looks like the latter is about to change.
"Finally I can say that I [have] been working closely with Riot to the point they asked me to join them in the fight against cheaters," Al-Sharifi said in a TwitLonger post. "I will be exclusively working for Riot and not other titles anymore - I hope many of you understand why."
"I am grateful to have been given a second chance in life," Al-Sharifi said, adding he'd almost become homeless again four months ago, a point he described as "the darkest era" of his life. "I fled from a country of war, I came here for a sense of security and comfort, I am not well educated [and] I didn't pass my exams since I came pretty late to school.
"Looking back at all the hardships... all the mistakes I have made, it formed me into a better and stronger person. There are still some issues I need to fix about myself and learn even, but further from that, I am happy with who I am, and I hope to continue to change for the better and push through new challenges and hardships I face next.
"This is just my passion so I couldn't have asked for a better dream job, it's everything I ever wanted, and I am eternally grateful for it."
Al-Sharifi will be working with the Riot team on their Vanguard software, an anti-cheat system used in Valorant that has been criticised for operating at kernel level, but still has its fair share of hackers. "No game is unhackable. No cheat is undetectable," Al-Sharifi told Vice. Sounds like he still has his work cut out for him.